Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Hunt for the Yeti, Toss Your Point Salad, and Become a U.S. Food Chain Magnate

• Passport Game Studios is importing copies of Splotter Spellen's Spiel 2015 release Food Chain Magnate for distribution in the U.S., and it expects that the copies will be available in...

BGG.CON 2015 II: Fun Facts and More!

Welcome to Part 2 of BGG.CON 2015! Be sure to check out Part 1 as well for food, registration/door prizes, hot games, Geek Buzz, and more!Hack and Slash Games, producers of Ophidian 2350, one of...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Gale Force Nine's Star Trek, Pixel Tactics Deluxe, Far Space Foundry, Pack O Game, The Grizzled, and The Next Great American Game

• Time to close out the video coverage of BGG.CON 2015, starting with the announcement of Star Trek: Ascendancy, an enormous 4X board game from Gale Force Nine, with the publisher hoping to...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Shadows over Normandie, Deception, Champions of Midgard, Onitama & Saloon Tycoon

• Yann and Clem's Shadows over Normandie, co-published by Devil Pig Games and IELLO, is an otherworldly companion to their WWII game Heroes of Normandie, with the two games being integrable...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Patient Zero, Automobiles, Flock, Crossing & Munchkin: The Nightmare Before Christmas

• On November 18, 2015, opening day of BGG.CON 2015, I covered the licensing of Jay Little's Patient Zero by U.S. publisher Split Second Games, and during the con itself BGG News correspondent...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Apollo XIII, Titan Race, Bottom of the 9th, Skyway Robbery & Battle Merchants: New Kingdoms

• At Spielwarenmesse 2015 in January, we recorded an overview of Andrea Crespi's Apollo XIII from Pendragon Game Studio, but the game was still in development, so the publisher asked us to hold...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Wings for the Baron, Nemo's War & Hunt: The Unknown Quarry

• If Alan Emrich at Victory Point Games needs a second career, he should give lessons on how to deliver an elevator pitch as he does one to perfection for the second edition of Wings for the...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews — Tiny Epic Western, The Opulent, Gruff & Castle Assault

• Let's call this round-up of demo videos from BGG.CON 2015 the Kickstarter edition since it includes titles that will be coming to that crowdfunding site in 2016 or titles that have already...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Previews from Days of Wonder — Quadropolis & Ticket to Ride: UK and Pennsylvania

• Days of Wonder used to be a black box in terms of revealing information about a game prior to its official announcement, but that policy came to an end in early 2014 when it started...

BGG.CON 2015: Previews from Eagle-Gryphon Games — The Gallerist, Loop Inc. & Fleet Wharfside

• Vital Lacerda's The Gallerist from Eagle-Gryphon Games was one of the highlights of Spiel 2015 for many gamers, and now the title is available in North America — or at least it will be soon...

BGG.CON 2015: Previews from Mayfair Games — King Chocolate, Booty, Grand Austria Hotel & Mystery! Motive for Murder

• Mayfair Games had several new releases on display and available for purchase at BGG.CON 2015, including Stefan Alexander's King Chocolate, which is one of the nicest-looking original games...

New Game Round-up: Ashes to Ashes, To Russia With Love & Return We Will to Old Brazil

• After selling more than 18,000 copies of Isaac Vega's Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, Plaid Hat Games has announced ambitious plans for expansions and organized play that reach into 2017.To...

BGG.CON 2015: Previews from Lone Shark Games — Apocrypha Adventure Card Game and The Ninth World: A Skillbuilding Game for Numenera

• You might have already heard of the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game from Lone Shark Games, given that it funded to the tune of $330k in mid-2015 on Kickstarter, but did you know that it's the...

BGG.CON 2015: Game Preview — Chronicles: Origins

Many games were previewed at BGG.CON 2015, and one of the biggest was Chronicles: Origins, a co-design between Rob Daviau and Artana's Dirk Knemeyer that is scheduled to debut at Gen Con 2016....

New Game Round-up: Conjure Spirits, Examine Human Behavior, and Push People to Their Doom

• Brett Picotte self-published the abstract strategy game Push Fight in 2008, registered the game on BGG in 2009, then nothing was posted in the page's forum until Penny Arcade wrote up the...

BGG.CON 2015: Preview of Victorian Masterminds, or London Falling

One big advantage of game conventions is that you can meet designers and play their creations long before those games are available on the market, as was the case with Victorian Masterminds,...

BGG.CON 2015: Previews of Burgle Bros., The King's Abbey, and Kodama: The Tree Spirits

• Designer Tim Fowers is known for the self-published titles Wok Star and Paperback, and his third self-published title — the cooperative heist game Burgle Bros. — was available for playing...

BGG.CON 2015 I: Fun Facts and More!

BGG.CON was held November 18-22, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency DFW Airport in Texas. The location is super convenient unless you accidentally fly into Love Field Airport (when SOMEONE,...

Game Preview: Ghostbusters: The Board Game

I didn't attend BGG.CON 2015 due to other travel plans that took place at the same time, but thankfully Beth Heile reprised her host role from Gen Con and Spiel and took time out from playing...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Five Games for People on the Go, Three New Worlds, and One Faux Viking Creation

• Let's kick off this miniature c.f. round-up with a title that you can't even buy, at least not immediately. Instead you're giving funds so that others can play.German designer/publisher...

New Game Round-up: Numenera in the Cards, Drones at the Gaming Table, and Marshmallows at the Dawn of Time

• Time for another round-up of new game announcements that have been buried in my inbox for (possibly) far longer than they should have been, starting with Lone Shark Games and titles other...

Gen Con 2016 to Expand into Lucas Oil Stadium

Gen Con 2015 was the largest game convention yet in Indianapolis, Indiana — 61,000+ unique attendees, 400+ exhibitors, and 14,000+ events — but that growth came at a cost, with multiple...

New Game Round-up: Making Kings, Building Heroes, and Seating the Family at the Table

• Blue Orange Games has revealed two of its 2016 offerings, with one of them being by company co-owner Thierry Denoual and following the "learn it in thirty seconds" rule that seems to underlie...

New Game Round-up: Arkwright Returns, Temporum Expands, and World War I Moves Underground

• Capstone Games is a new U.S. publisher founded by Clay Ross, and it's debuting at the 2016 Origins Game Fair with the release of a second edition of Stefan Risthaus' Arkwright, first released...

For 2016 IELLO Teases Pigs and Rats, Candy and Cats, and Bunnies, Buildings and Pirates

Typically I don't feel like I finish my coverage of Gen Con or Spiel, but simply run out of time and need to transition to whatever the most recent event is. To wit, at Spiel 2015 I took many...

Links: Steve Jackson Games Looks Back to 2014 & Game Designers Complain About Things

• Each year since 2003, Steve Jackson Games has released a "Report to the Stakeholders", and these reports always make for fascinating reading as they're one of the few windows offered into the...

The Infinite Board Game Is Now Available in Finite Numbers

If you'll indulge me a self-centered post on Cyber Monday, I'd like to announce that The Infinite Board Game — a collection of piecepack games that includes a snazzy piecepack set — is now...

New Game Round-up: Re-Escape from Colditz, Await This War Of Mine, and Ponder a Frozen Tide of Iron

• UK publisher Osprey Games has announced a 75th anniversary edition of Escape from Colditz, designed by Pat Reid — a British officer who escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp in Colditz,...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Fantasy, Fascists and Frozen Faces

• NSKN Games has gone back to the crowdfunding well for Simurgh: Call of the Dragonlord, a modular expansion for Pierluca Zizzi's Spiel 2015 release Simurgh that adds new tiles of existing...

New Game Round-up: Migraines, Thievery, Limbo, Killer Candy, and Drunk Uncles

Time for another go at cleaning out the inbox, specifically checking out new game links that I had forwarded to myself for investigation but then forgot to check out. Let's sample what I thought...